Chapter 19
Nineteen
Morgan
My stomach is weak and watery in a stark contrast to the desert dryness of my mouth. You shouldn’t have stayed.
No, of course not. Hysterical laughter rises up in my throat and with the broom underneath my arm and the dustbin clanging, I jog out of the private gym with my chore decidedly not done.
I shouldn’t do a lot of things and somehow find myself in these situations where the worst possible things happen.
I hadn’t meant to stay and watch Kieran.
Not to document his deficiencies or find potential weaknesses, either, but out of some weird curiosity.
It’s going to get me in serious trouble one of these days.
I stand still in the hallway, the solid door at my back.
What would have happened if those brown eyes popped open and met mine?
Bad things. Very bad things.
Pulse racing, I drag the bucket over to a potted Ficus in a decorative pot styled like an old-fashioned amphora.
Sorry, plant.
The lye water goes straight in, the dirt sucking it up greedily. Without the weight of the water, I work my arms for speed and hustle toward one of the hidden staircases leading down.
Pulse racing. Breath quickening. My hand goes rigid on the bucket handle.
The sun has arced lower in the sky and lets me know in absolutely certain terms I’ve wasted hours with my nap. I slap myself on the forehead but the sense I’m lacking is somewhere out there, not close. I’m not able to hit it home. Pity.
If I had more sense, I’d stop letting myself be drawn into situations where I am left the inevitable loser. Taking a nap?
Am I fever-brained?
“Yes,” I answer out loud, glancing behind me as the last bell of the day tolls in the clocktower.
In the next breath, classroom doors open, the students pushing in a bid for escape.
Yes, I am out of my mind for so many reasons.
I take the steps two at a time and land on the bottom riser hard enough to jar my teeth. The bucket hits the stone with an awful crack.
Coughing, I race into the common area toward my bunk. Mrs. Milkin stands there, already waiting for me.
I pull up short and any excuse I might have had evaporates out of my mind.
Stray bits of brown hair spill from the confines of her bonnet and ripple with the rapid push and pull of her lungs, her chest heaving. She studies me.
“Well, Morgan?” she begins in a low voice. Her cheeks bloom with color. “There’s something you’d like to tell me. Isn’t there?”
How does she know about my nap? Does she have spies in every room?
An ominous rumble starts somewhere near my ribs and plummets until it disappears in the black pit of my stomach.
Nothing I’d like to say to her will do me a favor in today’s argument. The second I tell her the truth, it will spill out of me despite my best intentions, and she’ll shove me down a mineshaft herself.
Blood pulses in my ears.
I bite down on my tongue and wait for her to erupt. The explosion comes right on time.
“You’re not doing your work,” Milkin says, lifting her arms up at her sides. “The others are having to pull double time because you flutter around like you’re too good for any of this. Are you, Miss Whyte? Too good for manual labor?”
She pauses only for as long as it takes to draw another breath, and my mind skitters to a full halt.
“I thought your silence was a good thing, until I realized there’s a reason for it.
You’re not staying out of trouble, you aren’t keeping your head down and performing your duties with grace.
You’re shirking them! Sleeping away the time.
Today is not the first time you’ve failed to complete an assignment. Am I correct?”
Milkin draws herself up to her full height. I never considered her menacing before but there is something horrible about her face. Her embedded frown lines are deeper, her eyes tracing mine and her hands clasped hard enough to turn her knuckles white.
There’s no good answer.
“No one is above their station, not even you. The sooner you learn your place, the easier it will be for you. Exceptions benefit nobody.” Her hands drop to her waist into two well-worn grooves where she so often puts them. “So why should they be made for you?”
I hang my head, anger coating the inside of my throat. I try to open my mouth to say something to her, but the muscles lock tight and keep my jaw in place.
Milkin rakes her eyes over me again, finding every part of me wanting. Sweat slicks the back of my dress to my skin.
“When the others came to me, I told them they were being foolish. You needed time to adjust. But the time has passed, and I am the only fool here for giving you the benefit of the doubt.” Satisfaction flashes across her face.
“I never said I was too good for the work,” I finally whisper.
Milkin takes a step closer. “No? The others have heard you, speaking about your past. The servants you used to have at your beck and call.”
Panic, my old friend, pries itself free from my chest and claws toward my throat.
“That’s not true.”
Isn’t it, though? Yet, I never talked about home. I’d tried to shove my past behind thick walls, but there were times it inevitably surfaced.
“Daisy came to me when you first arrived, after I asked her to take you under her wing, and she spoke about your insolence. I told her to give you a chance. Now I’m wondering if we’ve made a mistake by not beating this defiance out of you sooner.”
The touch of a whip would be better than the chewing out. Air rushes out of me and queasiness takes hold. I wait for the pain when Milkin reaches out a hand. I brace, my cheek already throbbing.
Her power lies in control. She doesn’t have to touch me to make her point.
She’s already proven she can.
Her hand drops back to her side and she stands in front of me with an unmasked sneer, waiting for me to meet her gaze again.
At least if she beats me, I’ll have the scars to show I survived. In this situation, the only toll taken is inside of me where no one else is around to witness the bloody and bruised areas.
“We’ve had to pick up extra chores to cover for her.” The voice comes from the left, and I glance up sharply to see Druella, the blonde I’d almost beaten up, join Milkin in the tirade. “She often leaves her duties only half finished, if she bothers to complete them. I’ve seen her, Mrs. Milkin.”
She’d recovered well enough from the attack. Only a faint trace of blush and plum mark the contusions around her eyes. The split in her lip has healed and the nose I’d broken has been reset in place.
The discolorations on her cheeks are all but gone.
“Yes, exactly. You do realize, Miss Whyte,” Milkin begins, condescension dripping from each word, “that if someone complains about one of us, we all get in trouble? Every single person here will suffer because you’ve decided you are too good to see your jobs to completion?”
“I’m not too good for them,” I insist. It costs me. “I’m doing my best. I’m trying as hard as I can.”
Druella sniffs, scoffs, lets out a hen’s cackle of laughter. “Your best?”
To her, I’m the most hilarious person in the room.
“You can’t be serious. She’s still wearing the necklace, too, Mrs. Milkin. The one she accused me of stealing? Why would she wear it if she didn’t think herself better than the rest of us?”
The crone’s gaze sharpens on the lump underneath my tunic. “Is that true?”
The panic reverberates through me. I have to do something. Or else I might not get out of this room. But I can’t move.
“She’s not denying it, Mrs. Milkin.” Druella glowers at me.
I straighten, going still as the head housekeeper peels her hands free from her plump waist and plucks the necklace out of its hiding place. She stares at the sapphire for a heartbeat before drawing the chain up around my head and yanking it off.
The violent yank scrapes the underside of my chin.
“This,” Milkin hisses, “is a symbol from your old life. And the longer you keep it, the longer it will take for you to realize that things have changed. You are not the girl who got accepted to DragonSpear. You’re not a student here. You are nobody. You are a part of the castle ecosystem.”
The room disintegrates around me. She might as well take me by the throat. Each battering word she tosses at me has venom pooling on my tongue with nowhere to go.
“You are the heart beating it in its chest. DragonSpear, the crown… your purpose is to serve.”
“Hail King Lochlain,” Druella mutters under her breath.
Milkin dutifully nods along with the sentiment. Her fingers clench around the chain as she dangles it in front of my face.
Alarm lifts inside me.
“Give that back.”
It’s the only thing I have left from my mother.
Her smirk twists the corners of her mouth.
“This? You will never see this again.” She steps up and dangles the sapphire directly in front of me.
My jaw aches from holding myself back. Finally, I reach for it to rip the pendant right out of Milkin’s hand and shove it down her throat.
She makes a noise in her throat but avoids my reach. Fear flickers through me.
“It was my mother’s,” I plead.
“You should have thought of that before you pushed your work onto everyone else. Actions have consequences,” Milkin bids me. “You of all people understand it.”
The shuffle of footsteps sounds from the entrance to the room. We have an audience, an even larger group to witness my humiliation and heap on the insults of what I haven’t been doing rather than defend what I have.
They’re not wrong. I’m not suited for this life. I’ve never cleaned a floor or dusted a chandelier in my life.
I’m trying.
No one sees it but me. Today’s nap was a one off, not to be repeated.
The world goes dark around the edges and the scream I’ve held back aches to burst free.
“You people.” Milkin pitches her voice low enough for my insides to seize.
“You think you can refuse to play your part in the working of our great society. When a single cog fails to do its duty, the machine does not work the way it is intended. Your village needed to burn. If only you’d had the decency to go with them. ”